


Once I Saw

by Night-Mare (Aoife)



Category: Lady Lovibond (Folklore)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6869971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/pseuds/Night-Mare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This rather defies summary - at least, it defies my summary. </p><p>Something of an interview, about her appearance in '98.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once I Saw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [partypaprika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/gifts).



I saw the Lady Lovibond, you know. Oh, near twenty years ago. Saw her sail between the banks of the Goodwin Sands. I didn't realise it was her until I saw her sail straight over one of the sand bars and not come to grief; that made me pay attention, let me tell you!

You see I'd sailed those waters the previous summer, in a little dingy - there's a club that launches from the shingle straight out into the English Channel, and only the worst storms would keep us home - and gone out for the annual cricket match, held on the bar I'd just watched her sail straight over.

She was running a'fore the wind, too much sail for where she was - she's a Schooner, you know? Pretty little thing compared to some of the stuff that sails now. Her sails were what had caught my attention - creamy white linen, eye catching compared to the rust red sails of the other sailing ships, or rather barges, that frequent the channel. Should have known that there was something unusual about her when I saw them - there's good reason for the darker colours. They make the sails last longer.

There's also a good reason there's an expensive set of binoculars kept in my bedroom's bay window. In the summer, there's all sorts of sea birds to watch - even if I'd rather watch our local herring gull infestation through a 'scope, there are more interesting birds that make use of the Sands, and seals and the occasional dolphin makes themself known. The handful of still functioning Thames barges sail the coast inland of the Sands, too, their rigging as distinctive as their hulls, and there's a couple of conserved fishing boats that also sail with red sails - I'm rambling aren't I? You were asking about sighting the Lady Lovibond ...

... I'd heard her legend of course. You don't live round here and sail, without hearing all of the tales that feature the Sands, but I'd forgotten the date that she was suppose to reappear. I knew it was this year - once every fifty years is easy to remember - but I hadn't remembered the _day_. Nice day it was, too, for a miserable day in February. Above freezing, not too windy, not too wet, yet she was flying like she was running from a storm and those sails.

It took me a while to think about picking up those binoculars, and my eyes remained fixated on her. Not because I thought she was the Lady Lovibond. Not yet anyway. But she was out of place, out of the ordinary and I couldn't place _how_ other than those beautiful sails. I like to think that if it had been one of the Thames barges I would have realised sooner; I know the ones that survive by name - and I know the names of the ones who went to the beaches and never returned, and the way the ones that are left move gives them away - all the ones that venture into the Channel have auxiliary motors now. Or even one of the tall ships - the papers announce when they're to sail past, and the world takes itself to see them if they moor up in the area, but I had no knowledge of which schooners still sail - they're not as well tracked as the larger historical ships and boats that still ply the English coastal waters.

She's a beautiful ship 'tho, and I did reach for the binoculars in the end - and that was when I realised there was something strange going on. She had a shimmer to her, a translucence that was both eerie and beautiful. And before you ask, I hadn't been drinking - but I wouldn't blame you for asking. I wouldn't believe me if I hadn't seen her myself.

As I said I was watching her run before the wind, but with the binoculars I could see more - could see her running lights, the illumination leaking from below and between decks, her signal flags a flutter in a non existent breeze. Few sailors were visible, perhaps two at her rigging and another to the stern, managing her wheel; all appeared mostly calm, for all she raced before an invisible storm, but ...

... I watched, mouth dropping open as another came into view. More finely dressed, he stalked from the access to below decks, and swiped up a belaying pin from its place on the gunwales and I _knew_. Knew which ship it was that I watched racing through the Sands. The rest of that sorry episode seemed to unravel, much as I knew the story went; the sailor slain, the wheel lashed to ruinous course - but then, but then I saw another figure draped in finest silks emerge from beneath the decks. She had never featured in the tales I had heard, either in word or song, as anything but the cause of the Lady Lovibond's fate - married to her captain and thus spurning his lieutenant. And the Captain's lady knelt before him, next to the sailor he'd slain and I watched her beg - even as her husband - or another, for how could I be sure - tried to get to the wheel. He failed of course, taking his own blow from his Lieutenant's belaying pin. 

As if in sympathy, the ship shuddered. My jaw snapped shut as I realised that she had reached the point where she'd been wrecked and I swallowed. Even knowing the crew were two centuries dead made watching what came next no easier. The Sands are cruel to the unwary, and unforgiving even in the brightest sunlight. A man bent on his own destruction, -

\- no matter what, this could not ever have ended well. She tried, the lady of the Lady Lovibond, but even she slipped beneath the waves whilst I watched. And as if her slipping beneath the waves was the final cue, the Lady Lovibond was gone - and here I am. Telling you a tale that you don't believe; or do you, and will you be here, come '48? 


End file.
